Wednesday, October 11, 1995 (2 articles) PARIS (AP) -- Raising new questions about the safety of French nuclear tests, a newspaper published photographs Wednesday that it says show cracks in one of the South Pacific atolls where the underground explosions took place. Ouest-France said the photographs contradict government claims that the tests caused no damage to Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia. Critics say the nuclear tests could cause the atoll to break apart, spewing radioactivity into the water and air in what many consider to be one of the world's last paradises. The government denied a similar report last week in the respected daily Le Monde. It had no immediate comment on Ouest-France's claims. Ouest-France said the photos were taken in 1987 and 1988 by a diver several dozen yards under the Mururoa Lagoon. The cracks are about 9 to 10 1/2 feet wide and several miles long, the newspaper said. It did not reveal the photographer's identity or say who he was working for. Normally only military personnel and scientists working on the French nuclear program have access to the isolated atoll, about 750 miles southeast of Tahiti. After the Le Monde report, French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette told the National Assembly that "no crack of any sort has ever been discovered" on the atoll. Experts at the French Atomic Energy Commission said some fractures were created by the first tests carried out directly under Mururoa's reef. But they said there had been no further cracks since tests were moved to the middle of the lagoon. France has exploded two nuclear devices in the South Pacific since President Jacques Chirac announced the resumption of the nuclear testing last June after a three-year moratorium. The decision to hold up to eight tests raised an international outcry. European Commission President Jacques Santer demanded Wednesday that France supply more information about the nuclear tests "without delay." BUCHAREST, Romania (Reuter) -- New Zealand and other South Pacific states drove home their attack on French nuclear testing Wednesday, using a forum of 500 parliamentarians from 130 countries to issue a call to "stop this foolishness." But a member of President Jacques Chirac's neo-Gaullist RPR party defended the tests as "indispensable" to a future ban while China defended its right to maintain an independent nuclear deterrent while showing "extreme restraint." A New Zealand motion, backed by Japan, Chile and Australia was forced on to the agenda of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) which is meeting in the Romanian capital. Launching a debate on the French testing at Mururoa atoll, New Zealand politician Max Bradford told the conference the campaign against testing was directed as much against China as against France and was not intended to be anti-French. "We express the same message to China, or indeed any other state tempted to break the non-proliferation treaty," Bradford said of Chinese and French testing. "We want no quarter given to countries which have resumed tests against world opinion," he said. "We do not want to give comfort to those countries that might think they can sneak in a couple of quick nuclear tests, by turning a blind eye to the actions of France and China." "Stop this foolishness and stop the tests," Bradford said. But French Gaullist politician Jean-Claude Mignon defended the testing as a vital step toward computer-based simulation to replace actual explosions, insisting France was "committed to disarmament, peace and development." Tong Zhiguang, a member of the standing committee of the National People's Congress of China, told the conference China had the most restrained testing program of any nuclear power. In an apparent swipe at the United States, Tong defended China's right to test. "While a certain superpower still sticks to its policy of nuclear deterrence and refuses not to be the first to use nuclear weapons, China cannot but conduct a very limited number of nuclear tests . . . entirely in self-defense," he said.